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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Neil goes a trailer trawling #1

Okay, so Public Enemies turned out to be a little bit boring, Wolverine was a collection of bad set pieces with no story, Terminator Salvation had all the good story bits ripped out by test audiences and Transformers 2 was just Team America without the irony. So what now, I hear you cry? Well, it’s not all just remakes and sequels this year. Here’s a few that caught my eye doing the trailer rounds (that we haven’t already blogged!)

EDIT: Just noticed that the thumbnail shot for most of these trailers involve at least one of the lead actors looking wistfully towards the camera. Except District 9 of course. That has a robot looking wistfully at the camera.

District 9

In the aftermath of the prospected “Halo” film projects demise, Neil Blomkampf and Peter Jackson are moving onto bigger and, frankly, better things. District 9 looks set to have all of the social commentary you could ask for from a sci-fi thriller, as a group of Alien’s seek refuge on earth, only to be brutalised, segregated and exploited. Not only does it have the potential for great depth, but the trailer also shows the Weta workshop in overdrive, giving some of the most incredible effects shots I’ve ever seen.

Shutter Island

Okay, it’s an adaptation of a book, so technically doesn’t break the system of “remakes and sequels” that I made a sneering sideswipe at in the introduction to the article. It’s yet another Scorsese and Di-Caprio collaboration movie. Set in the 1950s, it follows a pair of FBI agents being drafted into investigating a missing person at an offshore mental hospital. There aren’t a huge amount of details given away in the trailer, but given the talent behind it, and the seemingly Lovecraftian aesthetic it looks highly promising, and a little bit terrifying.

Incidentally, I recently read on a forum that DiCaprio is “lame” because he always works with Martin Scorsese these days, rather than branching out and doing a comedy “or something”. Frankly, if Martin Scorsese took me as a protégé, I’d feel it would be rude to not oblige. That also explains why that particular IMDB poster’s burgeoning film career is doing so well.

Moon

Created by the son of David Bowie (Duncan Jones), so if awesomeness is even partially inherited genetically then this should be fantastic. Set on the moon (where else?), it seems Sam Rockwell’s stranded astronaut on a three year mining mission accompanied only by Kevin Spacey’s creepy emoticon based robot. As he is approaching the end of his tenure in space, he finds a corpse of a clone of himself. And that’s when the strangeness begins, where most films would place the pinnacle of it!

Already doing fantastically well on the festival circuit, it’s definitely one to watch.

Surrogates

Bruce Willis takes on the role of a technology fearing cop, in a murder free future, where all humans are represented by android avatars known as “Surrogates”, making violence pointless. However, when a surrogate is killed at the exact same time as the death of the controller, an investigation begins that could destroy the very core of this utopian society. Looking somewhere between Blade Runner and I Robot, it’ll hopefully have a bit more action than the former and a bit less product placement of the latter. It’s another adaptation, but one that’s never made it to the big screen before.

Inglorious Basterds

Well, it’d better be good, he’s been working on it for 15 years. Brad Pitt stars as an American Infantry captain, leading an elite team of psychopaths on a covert mission deep into the heart of Nazi Germany, to torture their way into legend. Frankly, I can’t really work out much else from the trailer, but it looks better than Death Proof, so at least that’s one little victory.

And...

Ahem...

Sherlock Holmes

Okay, everything points to this being a little bit shit, what with it being Guy Ritchie at the helm and the fact that it seems like a Jerry Bruckheimer-esque take on classic, detective fiction. But, in it’s favour it does have Robert Downey Jr in the lead role of Holmes, and frankly the trailer is worth watching just for the perfectly timed hammer scene halfway through.

If you have any trailers that looked particularly impressive, let us know in the comments section.